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Three Men on the Edge
Three Men on the Edge is a flash fiction novella by Michael Loveday featuring three men living on the edge of London.
The story of the three men – Gus, Denholm and Martyn – is narrated in three distinctive sections: Denholm – Cause for Alarm; Gus – The Invisible World; Martyn – Chewing Glass.
“A beautifully crafted novella-in-flash, small and perfect slices of life written with skill and heart.” Kit de Waal
“In his debut novella Michael Loveday sketches with a delicate brush the colourful lives of three troubled men living on the edge of London. With poetic language and emotional precision, Loveday writes like a cartographer about the wilderness we call ‘the human heart’.” Meg Pokrass
“This is a novella full of the aches and bruises left by loneliness. It's written in fragments, like a bottle smashed during a solitary boozing session, but it coheres around the vividly captured edgeland that haunts the three men. This a heart-felt book, but its prose is controlled by a steely intelligence. It's funny, too – and moving and scary. Michael Loveday is a name to watch. He's writing a new kind of fiction.” David Swann
The story of the three men – Gus, Denholm and Martyn – is narrated in three distinctive sections: Denholm – Cause for Alarm; Gus – The Invisible World; Martyn – Chewing Glass.
“A beautifully crafted novella-in-flash, small and perfect slices of life written with skill and heart.” Kit de Waal
“In his debut novella Michael Loveday sketches with a delicate brush the colourful lives of three troubled men living on the edge of London. With poetic language and emotional precision, Loveday writes like a cartographer about the wilderness we call ‘the human heart’.” Meg Pokrass
“This is a novella full of the aches and bruises left by loneliness. It's written in fragments, like a bottle smashed during a solitary boozing session, but it coheres around the vividly captured edgeland that haunts the three men. This a heart-felt book, but its prose is controlled by a steely intelligence. It's funny, too – and moving and scary. Michael Loveday is a name to watch. He's writing a new kind of fiction.” David Swann
- GenresFlash Fiction
92 pages, Paperback
Published June 30, 2018
15 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 14, 2019
This book is published by V. Press - an independent publisher of poetry and flash fiction and is a flash fiction novella, with many of the short chapters being on the edge of prose poetry.
The book has three sections – each with a main male point of view character – Denholm, Gus and Martyn, all living on the edge of London (to the Northwest) and all living lives somewhat on the margins of society.
Denholm starts by recalling his mother’s novelty/junk shop chain across Rickmansworth (where he lives), Watford, Chorleywood, Bushey and St Albans. While his wife watches daytime TV and nurses an injured pigeon he builds a matchstick model of his home town while owndering how to deal with the overt attentions of his younger neighbour. Delightfully for this reader, one chapter features him finding a discarded Top Trumps Marvel Super Heroes Card of my favourite card – Silver Surfer.
Gus wanders through the Ricksmansworth Lakes and nearby Canals in the Colne Valley observing nature and remembering his deceased wife.
To Martyn, Rickmansworth resembles a delicate wrist watch with a built in tendency to lag behind the beat of time. A case in point: he is at Watersmeet Film Club, on a rain soaked Thursday afternoon, and the movie is … screening a full two months after its London release date.
Martyn appears to be a fantastist trying to insert himself into a relationship of two others – Anya and Rob
An interesting if very short read.
The book has three sections – each with a main male point of view character – Denholm, Gus and Martyn, all living on the edge of London (to the Northwest) and all living lives somewhat on the margins of society.
Denholm starts by recalling his mother’s novelty/junk shop chain across Rickmansworth (where he lives), Watford, Chorleywood, Bushey and St Albans. While his wife watches daytime TV and nurses an injured pigeon he builds a matchstick model of his home town while owndering how to deal with the overt attentions of his younger neighbour. Delightfully for this reader, one chapter features him finding a discarded Top Trumps Marvel Super Heroes Card of my favourite card – Silver Surfer.
Gus wanders through the Ricksmansworth Lakes and nearby Canals in the Colne Valley observing nature and remembering his deceased wife.
To Martyn, Rickmansworth resembles a delicate wrist watch with a built in tendency to lag behind the beat of time. A case in point: he is at Watersmeet Film Club, on a rain soaked Thursday afternoon, and the movie is … screening a full two months after its London release date.
Martyn appears to be a fantastist trying to insert himself into a relationship of two others – Anya and Rob
An interesting if very short read.
December 1, 2022
Three Men on the Edge by Michael Loveday (V. Press, 2018) is a novella-length book comprised of three short novellas-in-flash, the stories of three men: Denholm, Gus and Martyn – all struggling with life.
The first story, ‘Cause for Alarm’, explores the marriage of Denholm and his wife, Joan. Through the use of swans – birds which are renowned to mate for life – Loveday gives us some insights into the relationship. When Denholm’s friend shows him ‘an image of a swan pair, necks wound tight round each other’ Denholm doesn’t see romance, but instead shrugs and says, ‘“Could be the blur […] but it looks to me like they’re suffocating each other.”’ Later on he muses that ‘if he’d known, really known, how much marriage is one drowning person trying to push another under, he might not have risked it.’
In the second story – ‘The Invisible World’ – there are twelve micro fictions, one for each month in a year of Gus’ life following the loss of his wife whose presence he still feels acutely. He is stuck in a quagmire of grief he cannot, or does not want, to find a way to move on from. ‘There’s a veil between him and the world that will not lift, and to tear it down seems a betrayal. Why is it still not consolation – witnessing these swans, these shadows, this sky?’
The final and longest novella-in-flash is ‘Chewing Glass’ wherein Martyn navigates relationships with Anja and Rob. ‘[W]ith every relationship, the miniature sculptor works her hammer and chisel on the stone lump of your heart. If you’re really lucky, Martyn thinks, a man survives well enough to be left in the end with something recognisable.’
Throughout the book, Loveday supplements the starkness of these men’s lives with the stark beauty of nature. This adds, I feel, to the presence of a certain level of resignation, but also resilience. Because life is brutal, and all you can do is live it.
The first story, ‘Cause for Alarm’, explores the marriage of Denholm and his wife, Joan. Through the use of swans – birds which are renowned to mate for life – Loveday gives us some insights into the relationship. When Denholm’s friend shows him ‘an image of a swan pair, necks wound tight round each other’ Denholm doesn’t see romance, but instead shrugs and says, ‘“Could be the blur […] but it looks to me like they’re suffocating each other.”’ Later on he muses that ‘if he’d known, really known, how much marriage is one drowning person trying to push another under, he might not have risked it.’
In the second story – ‘The Invisible World’ – there are twelve micro fictions, one for each month in a year of Gus’ life following the loss of his wife whose presence he still feels acutely. He is stuck in a quagmire of grief he cannot, or does not want, to find a way to move on from. ‘There’s a veil between him and the world that will not lift, and to tear it down seems a betrayal. Why is it still not consolation – witnessing these swans, these shadows, this sky?’
The final and longest novella-in-flash is ‘Chewing Glass’ wherein Martyn navigates relationships with Anja and Rob. ‘[W]ith every relationship, the miniature sculptor works her hammer and chisel on the stone lump of your heart. If you’re really lucky, Martyn thinks, a man survives well enough to be left in the end with something recognisable.’
Throughout the book, Loveday supplements the starkness of these men’s lives with the stark beauty of nature. This adds, I feel, to the presence of a certain level of resignation, but also resilience. Because life is brutal, and all you can do is live it.
September 19, 2019
On his blog, Michael Loveday quotes from Edgelands: Journeys into England's True Wildernesses, in which the poets Michael Symmonds Roberts and Paul Farley look into: 'the fringes of English towns and cities, where urban and rural negotiate and renegotiate their borders…'. In Three Men on the Edge this sense of shifting boundaries is represented by both the narrative(s) and the form they take. It comprises three extended character studies, featuring men whose lives are more than usually in flux. Each is written as a series of short pieces that might be prose poetry (itself a nebulous entity) and might stand alone as works in their own right (several have appeared individually in magazines and journals dedicated to short fiction.) Central to all of them is a sense of place - in this instance, also hard-to-define (see above) - and a preoccupation with the way in which our quotidian reality seeps into both night and daytime dreams (and vice versa.) It's a playful book, with footnotes and good jokes. Some of the writing is pure poetry (whatever that means) - a man who doesn't want to talk is 'glass-mouthed' - some has other charms (oof!):
'It's true, Denholm questioned from the outset whether Joan was worth the gamble (in that leap year when she asked) as she waited for his no to emerge as a yes. But he's dimly aware, if he'd known, really known, how much marriage is like one drowning person trying to push another under, he might not have risked it.'
This is a formally interesting and thoroughly enjoyable work.
'It's true, Denholm questioned from the outset whether Joan was worth the gamble (in that leap year when she asked) as she waited for his no to emerge as a yes. But he's dimly aware, if he'd known, really known, how much marriage is like one drowning person trying to push another under, he might not have risked it.'
This is a formally interesting and thoroughly enjoyable work.
July 2, 2018
Clever, clean and economically written, Three Men on the Edge will surely win over those hesitant to commit to what might otherwise seem an esoteric and specialist form. Both character and place are perfectly evoked, and the sense of trauma only half-experienced is rarely far from the surface. These are men desperate to be something they are not, to be what they might have been or thought they always were, to be someone else entirely; men whose uncertain place in the world is echoed by the edgelands they inhabit.
Three Men on the Edge is a triumph, and I look forward to seeing more from Loveday.
Three Men on the Edge is a triumph, and I look forward to seeing more from Loveday.
August 3, 2020
A novella in flash about the lives of three men living on the edges of London. The novella is divided into three parts - one part for each character. This is not a traditional novella - there is no particular plot - although there are elements of plot. What I loved was the extraordinary rich language and the tenderness Loveday brings to these flawed and lonely men. The moments of comedy and poignancy are skillfully woven together.
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April 26, 2020"All three men in this collection of flash fiction are on the edge of misery, grief and desolation which becomes apparent as the reader is drawn slowly and deftly into their worlds. Each man’s life is tenderly drawn, gently exposed, and you feel their sadness. An extremely moving novella..."
Read Jacci Gooding's full review at: https://theshortstory.co.uk/short-sto...
Read Jacci Gooding's full review at: https://theshortstory.co.uk/short-sto...
August 18, 2019
...The writing has no spare fat. And though it reads as if these characters are spilling their thoughts and observations in a raw and fresh manner, the care taken in choosing each statement is apparent. No word is wasted...
May 16, 2020
Place is integral to this story and for me, it over-shadows the prose at the expense of character development because, while setting gave me some insight into the three characters' psyche, it is quite limiting leaving me with questions about them. Michael certainly shows his talent for flash fiction and poetry- at conveying a great deal in a few words- but I didn't feel this was a 'whole' piece of work complete with beginning and ending and more a fragment of beautiful parts.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews